


You Can Close Your Eyes

by bsmog



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Canon Divergence - Post-Avengers (2012), Fluff, Kidfic, M/M, clint needs a hug and a nap, phil probably needs a hug and a nap too, what just happened?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-22
Updated: 2015-06-22
Packaged: 2018-04-05 13:33:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,152
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4181724
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bsmog/pseuds/bsmog
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clint comes home from a mission and all he wants is a shower and a beer and to hug his husband and go to sleep. Phil thwarts his plans, but it's okay, because it's Phil. </p>
<p>Or, a bit of Father's Day fluff.</p>
            </blockquote>





	You Can Close Your Eyes

**Author's Note:**

> I haven't quite figured out how this happened, but it happened. I blame Sapphire Scribe. And by blame, I pretty much entirely mean thank. You know how it is. You say potato...
> 
> Title and song lyrics from You Can Close Your Eyes by James Taylor. My dad used to sing it to me when I was little, and it will still put me to sleep to this day.

# You Can Close Your Eyes

“I’m home…” 

Clint means for it to be more of an announcement and less of a mumbled sigh of relief, but let’s be real, Avengering is a bitch and he’s been awake for something like eleventy billion hours, and all he wants is a shower (whatever the fuck that thing sprayed at him and the subsequent decontamination does not count), a beer, to kiss his husband, and to fall in bed for about eleventy billion more hours. Not necessarily in that order, but he’s not really picky at this point.

The apartment is quiet, mid-afternoon (or mid-morning? fuck, he doesn’t know) light streaming gently through the windows. God, Clint loves this place. It’s so light and airy and yet homey and cozy at the same time. Everything he never had in his life wrapped into one not-so-tiny, sometimes-neat package, and tied with the bow that’s his marriage to Phil. 

He closes the door behind him and sucks in a deep breath. Home. He’ll never get tired of being able to say that word in any context, but especially not in one that includes Phil. It hadn’t taken them long to find their way together once Phil’s new team showed up on YouTube and Clint was able to come to grips with the fact that Phil really was alive. 

There had been a lot of yelling and a couple of punches - Clint wasn’t the only one with a lot of pent-up emotions, apparently, and the new version of Phil is less likely to take things calmly. Clint likes that about him. And then there was a whirlwind of stolen moments between missions - drinks or coffee or, if they were lucky, an entire, uninterrupted meal. One such uninterrupted meal turned into three days in which neither of their teams could find them, not that they tried very hard, and at the end of it they’d agreed this thing, whatever it was, had promise. 

Six months later, they were married, quickly and quietly between an Avengers mission and some raid on a HYDRA base. It was the happiest day of Clint’s life, even if he did get shot at the end of it. See: Avengers mission. Just a flesh wound, anyway, and besides, _married_. 

Clint grins as he thinks about it and pulls at the chain around his neck until it slides over his head, sliding the ring off the chain and onto his finger. Braided bowstrings dipped in some kind of metal - Phil has access to things even Clint doesn’t want to know about, although he suspects Tony had more to do with this than S.H.I.E.L.D. did. He loves wearing it, hates having it off, and always makes sure it’s on his finger the moment a mission is over. 

“Phil?” He keeps his voice soft. If Phil’s home and awake, he’d be out here already, checking Clint for injuries, herding him to the kitchen or the shower or to bed, depending on where Clint looks worst. 

His ears perk as he rounds the corner through the kitchen, hearing a low murmur that sounds like...wait, is that Phil _singing_? Clint feels his eyebrows climb up into his hairline. Phil’s actually got a great voice, but he _never_ sings when anyone can hear him. Not even Clint, unless he doesn’t know. Clint knows that mostly because the only times he’s ever heard Phil sing have been times that Clint was in some state of semi-consciousness and they were in some godforsaken place trying to live another day. Every now and again, when Clint was slipping in and out of lucidity from blood loss or poison or one too many shots to the head, he’d come to to hear Phil singing under his breath, almost like a lullaby. Almost like he was trying to soothe Clint, but never when he knew Clint was awake. 

In spite of the pain that usually accompanied those moments, they were always some of Clint’s favorites in the field. 

Apparently, Phil sings even when Clint doesn’t need soothing. And apparently he didn’t hear the click of the door or Clint’s greeting when he came in. Clint stands still and silent in the hall outside the spare room just listening, a small smile playing over his lips when he hears the words.

“ _...you can close your eyes, it’s all right_  
_I don’t know no love songs, and I can’t sing the blues anymore._  
_But I can sing this song_  
_And you can sing this song, when I’m gone…_ ”

James Taylor. He knows this one, Phil used to use this one when things were particularly bad, and Clint always thought maybe Phil saved it for when he needed a little soothing too. 

“ _Won’t be long before another day…_ ”

Finally, the need to actually see Phil overcomes just how much Clint wants to stand here and listen to Phil sing a lullaby to their empty apartment, and he intentionally scuffs his boot on the floor as he turns the corner into the doorway. 

And stops dead in his tracks. 

“What the-”

Phil turns smoothly, a smile on his lips that’s a little at odds with the circles under his eyes that are definitely more pronounced than usual. But Clint only has a second to process the look on Phil’s face, because his brain is too busy trying to understand the tiny bundle in Phil’s arms. He recognizes the baby blanket - purple, at his insistence - and the towel thrown over Phil’s shoulder, but…

“She came early.” Phil’s smile grows a little, but his voice cracks. “I didn’t want you to miss it, but I couldn’t get any of you on comms, and…”

“They dropped some kind of electrical storm,” Clint says, voice on autopilot, “no comms in or out for three days, we couldn’t even talk to each other or...what the hell, Phil?”

He knows his eyes are huge, knows his face is slack with shock, knows this isn’t how he should look the first time he lays eyes on the...on his daughter. _Their_ daughter. Holy fuck, Clint has a _daughter_ , and wow, the world just started buzzing a little and was it always this bright in here?

Phil’s smile fades and Clint can see the worry setting in even through the shock pulsing through his system, and it’s like a shake back to reality. This is real, it’s Phil and him and what they’ve been carefully planning for months, poring over surrogate options and meeting Laura and buying impossibly tiny clothes and blankets and trying to figure out how the fuck to assemble a crib until Tony showed up and shamed them both away from the tools. 

“Clint? This...she...we can’t…” Phil looks downright panicked now, and oh hell no, that’s not happening, because Clint had thought all he wanted was a shower and a beer and his bed, but what he wants now is to wrap his husband and his daughter - his _family_ \- in his arms and never let them go. 

So he does. In two steps, he’s got them both clutched to his chest, _carefully_ , because holy shit, babies are _tiny_. 

“Holy shit,” he says aloud, little more than a breath. “How?”

Phil, who’s got his face buried in Clint’s shoulder, huffs. 

“Don’t make me explain the biology of it to you. Please. I was there, and I’ve seen some terrifying shit, but my god, there’s a reason men don’t have children.”

“When?”

“Tuesday,” Phil mumbles. “Brought her home Wednesday afternoon.”

Clint can feel him going nearly slack in his arms, and it’s no wonder. It’s Sunday, and Phil’s been doing this alone all week with no idea where Clint was or when he’d be home or if he was even okay. He curses under his breath and swears he’ll be having a talk with Tony as soon as he can about some kind of method of communication that gets past all these fucking electrical interruptions. He doesn’t care if it’s a fucking homing pigeon on steroids, there’s got to be something. 

He owes it to Phil. To his family. He gulps in a deep breath, meaning to apologize, meaning to tell Phil how sorry he is to have left him, to have missed it.

All that comes out is, “Can I hold her?”

Phil huffs again, but when he lifts his head he’s smiling again, even if his eyes are suspiciously wet. Which Clint is not going to call him on, because he can feel a lump rising in his own throat, and who has time for all that pot/kettle shit when he’s got to make sure he doesn’t drop a baby in about five seconds. 

“Make a cradle with your arms,” Phil says, and that’s why Clint loves him so much. He knows exactly what Clint’s thinking just about every second of the day, and he sticks around anyway. 

Clint does what he’s told, and before he knows it, he’s staring down into sleepy blue eyes, watching tiny hands rub over pink cheeks, and fuck, he’s in love. 

“She’s been pretty good, considering,” Phil says, rubbing his own eyes for a moment before putting his hand on Clint’s back and shuffling them all to the oversized armchair they put in the spare room-turned nursery. 

Clint all but falls into the cushions, and Phil maneuvers himself into the space next to him, reaching out to let tiny baby fingers wrap around one of his. 

“Christ, she’s beautiful,” Clint breathes.

Phil rests his head on Clint’s shoulder and Clint feels him relax as he sighs. 

“She is. She’s also got your appetite and our penchant for insomnia.”

Clint frowns.

“I should have been here,” he says quietly. “I’m sorry, I-”

“Not one more word.” Phil’s voice is still quiet, but has a hint of _Agent Coulson_ to it, and Clint’s almost surprised there wasn’t a _Barton_ thrown in there. “You couldn’t have known, and we agreed when we started this that things would be business as usual until she came along. She just came along a little sooner than we expected is all. And I’ve had five whole days to get to know her, and I can promise you that you’re going to love her.”

“I already do,” Clint whispers.

He tears his eyes away from the tiny person in his arms to look at Phil, who’s smiling at him again, the smile no one else sees. Well, except on their wedding day, and when Tony sneaks into the apartment to fix things, or when Cap-fine, they’re saps in public these days, shut up, it’s still _his_ smile. 

“You can make it up to me next year with a really good gift,” Phil says, voice teasing.

“Gift?” Clint’s confused and a little panicked. He’s not great with dates, but he’s pretty sure it’s not Phil’s birthday or their anniversary. 

“Yep. I know it’s new for you, but it’s customary for fathers to get gifts on Father’s Day.” Clint stares at him blankly while Phil’s smile grows into an outright grin. He does like to tease Clint, Clint just hasn’t picked up on the punchline yet. What, he’s been up eleventy billion hours and his father was an abusive shitbag. “But you’re here, and you’re in one piece, and I love you both, so I’m calling this year a win.”

Clint mentally goes through every conversation he’s had in the last few weeks and suddenly his breath catches. 

“It’s Father’s Day. Today. Today is Father’s Day.” 

Phil laughs. 

“It is.”

“Holy shit. Holy shit, it’s Father’s Day and I’m…”

“You are.”

And there it is, the lump he’s been fighting down in his throat, back with a vengeance and accompanied by tears, and he’s not even going to apologize, because it’s Father’s Day and he and Phil have a _daughter_ and…

“Happy Father’s Day, Phil.” His voice cracks with an almost-sob, but he has to say it, because this is what they’ve been waiting for and he fucked it all up and it’s still perfect just like everything has been since the minute they decided that giving them a fighting chance was worth all the effort and pain and hassle, and now here they are and it’s more than he can bear and it’s fucking _perfect_.

He ducks his head, closing his eyes for just a second when Phil’s hand comes up to stroke at the back of his neck, but he can’t bring himself to keep them closed when he’s got absolute perfection in his lap. So he sits there and stares, tears running down his cheeks and a stupid smile on his face that only grows when Phil’s voice fills his ears and the room, easy and perfect and soothing. 

“ _Well the sun is surely sinking down_  
_And the moon is slowly rising_  
_And this whole world must still be spinning around_  
_And I still love you…_ ”

~*~


End file.
